BASEBALL

BASEBALL; Young Lightens Up a Dull Day for Mets

By CHARLIE NOBLES,

Published: March 6, 1994

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., March 5—
Anthony Young's self-described redemption year began ominously today. It wasn't exactly a case of pitch and duck for the Mets' right-hander, but it was close. Line drive out to center field. Base hit. Base hit.

Then Young veered from the train-wreck pattern of last year. He induced the Yankees' Sam Horn to hit into an easy 5-4-3 double play.

From there, Young looked both more like a serious contender to be the fifth pitcher in the Mets' starting rotation and more tradable. He allowed a harmless single and a walk over the next two innings.

Tally for the day: No runs, three hits and a walk in 29 pitches over three innings, as the Mets went on to be overwhelmed by the Yankees, 8-0, before 5,659 at Thomas J. White Stadium.

Young, coming off surgery to remove a spur from his pitching elbow, seemed satisfied with his first effort, although he felt a tingling in his pitching arm near the end.

"I have a lot to prove to myself this year," he said. "If I prove it to myself, I feel like I've proved it to the fans and to the press corps. I'm definitely looking for a big year out of myself."

In case you don't recall, Young set a major league record last season, when he lost his 27th straight decision. Young has said that finally ending the streak, on July 28 with a relief victory against the Florida Marlins, wasn't only like getting a monkey off his back, "it was like getting a whole zoo off."

For the season, he had a respectable 3.77 earned run average, but finished 1-16. The Mets' pitching coach, Greg Pavlick, called it "buzzard's luck."

The Mets' opponents keep talking down Young's trade value to Joe McIlvaine, the Mets' executive vice president of baseball operations, while trying to get him for next to nothing.

"This kid has great stuff and teams know it," McIlvaine said. "Sometimes a player won't do well in a particular city for one reason or another, for whatever reason. Anthony has been 3-30 over the last couple seasons, and that's not exactly attractive to people.

"But that's why you have scouts in the stands. And they know what this guy is capable of doing. He can be a very good pitcher for someone, including the Mets."

As it stands, Young is competing with lefties Eric Hillman and Pete Schourek and right-hander Frank Seminara to be the Mets' fifth starter, though Manager Dallas Green said, "It's more like six guys competing for two spots."

McIlvaine said the Mets, who gave Young a $25,000 raise to $230,000 in the off season, weren't shopping him.

Green, the Mets' manager, watched Young go through the adversity of 1993 and hopes the 28-year-old came away with new-found poise.

"I was very proud of him," Green said. "He really handled the media crunch and the stigma of losing well. But he's going to have to work hard to overcome what has happened to him. We're giving him every opportunity to show he deserves a chance on this ball club." INSIDE PITCH

BRET SABERHAGEN threw off the mound for 15 minutes Saturday morning and proclaimed himself healthy in the aftermath. Saberhagen, who missed his scheduled start Thursday because of a self-described "dead arm," did not appear to have any problems today and is expected to start in a B game Monday morning. "He threw real free and easy," said the pitching coach GREG PAVLICK . "He wasn't stiff at all." . . . BOBBY JONES gave up two homers and got the loss for the Mets, and BOB KIPPER gave up five hits and four runs (three earned) in two innings of work.